12 Terms from the Left 4 Dictionary

March 19, 2010 - Phil Co

While we are finishing up on the new L4D2 DLC "The Passing", we wanted to take a minute and talk about the process we use when designing maps.

But before we jump into that, we also wanted to give you a heads up to Watch Spike TV's GTTV this Friday night (March 19th) for more information on The Passing, including the poster tagline.

Internally, when we are in the early design stages of a campaign, we need an easy way to discuss the design without having to constantly consult drawings or rough maps. To do this, we created the Left 4 Dictionary. The dictionary is a set of terms used to describe a space.

1. Close Quarters
Close Quarters are a series of small combat spaces where the survivors must deal with the infected at a close proximity. Typically, the infected can get within 50 feet of the survivors before they are vulnerable. For example, the apartment building at the beginning of the No Mercy campaign in Left 4 Dead is a Close Quarters space. Although the infected have the advantage of appearing at close range, the survivors don't have too many entrances to cover to protect themselves.


Melee weapons in Left 4 Dead 2 add a lot to Close Quarters combat.

2. Narrow Flow
Flow is the main path of the level without taking any detours or dead ends. Narrow Flow is a tight directional space such as a hallway or alleyway that the survivors can cover by only looking forward and backward. If the survivor team has 3 or 4 members active, the first can cover the front, a second can cover the back and the third and fourth members can consider themselves relatively safe. This allows for healing or reloading in a comfortable environment. Of course, the addition of the Charger makes Narrow Flow areas a bit more dangerous.


The Tunnel of Love in the Dark Carnival campaign is an example of Narrow Flow.

3. Wide Flow
Wide Flow is a directional space along the main path as well but is too wide to be safely covered entirely by the front and back. Survivor teams can stick to one side of a Wide Flow area so that they have at least one protected side. Most streets and roads are considered Wide Flow.


This street from The Parish campaign in Left 4 Dead 2 becomes more hazardous with the addition of a car alarm trap.

4. Capillaries
Capillaries are small spaces off the main path that dead end. They can be used for a variety of purposes in Left 4 Dead, such as spawn locations for infected, scavenging of items, providing safe areas for the survivors to duck into during a mob or heal, and to safely avoid a special attack. The best examples of Capillaries are the hospital rooms along the hallways in the No Mercy campaign. Capillaries are also a great place for rescue closets.


Some of the hotel rooms in the first level of Dead Center are capillaries while some are along the main flow. A good strategy is to duck into a capillary when the horde comes.

5. Masking
Masking refers to elements in the world that you can walk and shoot through, but you can't see through. A thick layer of foliage such as trees and bushes are considered Masking. They allow infected to spawn closer in to the survivor team but leave them vulnerable to bullets.


The cane field in Hard Rain is one of the scariest areas in Left 4 Dead 2 - especially in Realism Mode!

6. Sanitizing
When you're playing on the infected team, and the survivors reach a point that is nearly impossible for you to get at them, they may have reached a Sanitizing space.


The CEDA trailer in the 2nd level of The Parish is meant to be a sanitizing space for the survivors to get ready for the run to the bus depot tower.

7. Tube
Lots of times in Left 4 Dead, the main path branches so that the survivors have some choices they get to make. A Tube is a great tool used to create branching pathways. You can go around or travel through the Tube to continue toward your goal. For example, in the subway tunnels in the No Mercy campaign, there's an area with an open subway car that you can go through or choose to go around. Going through the Tube is usually safer for the survivor team.


Survivor teams can get split up exploring this space since they can go around or through the subway car.

8. King of the Hill
Playtests for Left 4 Dead taught us that some of the favorite moments for the survivor team was picking off infected from a higher vantage point. King of the Hill areas allow both the survivor and infected teams to get to a higher elevation.


The rooftops on the way back to the boat in Hard Rain allow an escape from the flooding as well as a better vantage.

9. Fish in a Barrel
Fish in a Barrel is the survivor-safe version of King of the Hill. The infected can't climb up to where the survivors are, but it usually means that the survivors can't get back up to it when they move on.


The fourth map in the Death Toll campaign starts out with a Fish in a Barrel moment where you can clear the area ahead before you get there.

10. One-Way
When a survivor drops into a pit or off of a balcony and he can't climb back up, it's called a One-Way. These are crucial points in VS matches where an infected can grab the last guy to drop down and the survivors are helpless to do much about it. One-Way drops also allow designers to trap the survivor team for finales and mini-finales.


The entire survivor team must coordinate behind the motel in Dark Carnival so that they all drop down the cliff at the same time.

11. Return
A Return is when the survivor team can be returned to an area where they had been before by falling, kind of like a chute in the board game Chutes & Ladders. A Smoker can wait for the right moment and pull a survivor off a bridge or a roof and cause a lot of trouble for the team.


A good smoker can yank a survivor off of this raised walkway forcing the team to split up.

12. Holdout
A Holdout is a defensible position for the survivors in a finale or mini-finale. Sometimes, the Holdout is made more prominent by survivor tools such as propane tanks, gas cans, grenades, and the minigun.


This Holdout space in the generator room of the subway is stocked with health and a minigun.

If you are interested in creating your own levels, you can download the Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools from tool tab on Steam (You must already own Left 4 Dead 2). You can find more information in the L4D2/Maps forums, the L4D Mapper Mailing list and make sure to check out the Left 4 Dead mapping tutorial to get you started.

Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 are coming to the Mac!

March 8, 2010 - L4D Team

Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 are coming to the Mac!

We like the platform wars in the forums so much that we've decided to add a new platform to the fray. Later this spring, we'll be releasing both Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 on the OSX operating system for Mac computers, all through Steam.



Steam on the Mac will behave just like Steam for Windows, but through Steam Play will add cross-platform ownership. That means if you own Left 4 Dead 2 for Windows, then you already own it for the Mac. There's no need to buy it twice! Unless you want to buy it twice, in which case, as long as you're feeling so generous, why not buy it five times?

Plus, Mac and Windows players can go head-to-head, since both Left 4 Deads are cross-platform compatible. Mac owners can even host their own servers, just like Windows users.

The Mac Versions of L4D1 and 2 don't run under emulation software but in native code. That's technical talk for how cool your friends will think you are with your five copies of Left 4 Dead 2 for the Mac.

We'll be releasing the exact system requirements soon. The Mac versions will be updated in sync with the Windows versions, so the platform wars can continue uninterrupted.

Even though Left 4 Dead 2 is the only game you'll ever need on any platform, as a purely academic exercise, you should probably check out the complete catalog of games available on the Mac when the Steam client is released in a few weeks.

Don't worry, we'll make more

February 11, 2010 - L4D Team

In the first two months of Left 4 Dead 2's release, 28,981,249,043 zombies have been shot, bludgeoned, chainsawed and killed — or, for our younger readers, taken to a farm where they can frolic and shuffle around forever.

You read that correctly: 28 BILLION. To put that number in perspective:

• The entire population of the planet has been zombified and killed 4.26 times.


• With the average height of a zombie being 6 feet, if you stacked them end to end they would circle the globe 1,322 times.


• If you placed 28,981,249,043 rulers end to end, they would reach 28,981,249,043 feet in the sky.

In short: That is a bucketload of dead zombies. Nice job, everyone.

They Live

January 22, 2010 - L4D Team

With our last update having come out a few weeks ago and the next one a few weeks out, we wanted to let people know what we are working on. In addition to "The Passing" DLC, we are working on some other updates coming for both PC and 360. While not a complete list by any means, we wanted to give a heads up on a few Versus changes coming.

Bots
We are adding bots for the Infected team to help out the Infected when they are down a man or two. This will also make 1v1 Versus a bit more fun.

Auto-spawning
We've also been experimenting with a solution for auto-spawning in Versus finales. Even though it's pretty obvious from the L4D forums that EVERYONE LOVES auto-spawning in finales, we figured, what the hell-we'd just go ahead and remove auto-spawning anyway. But before we make any change to Versus we always need to see how the game is currently being played.

So how do finales currently play out? Across all finales in Left 4 Dead 2 currently, a single survivor has a 34.56% chance of escaping. That includes the Concert Finale in "Dark Carnival", which boasts close to a 50% escape rate (and yes, a fix for everyone's favorite cheese spot is coming). Remove the Concert Finale, and we see the average drop to 29.61%. With these figures in mind, when we make changes, we can measure the difference and see how much the change impacted the balance.

Another stat we often see discussed: What gets played more, Versus or Campaign? It really depends on the day, as they are almost always statistically tied. They are unquestionably the two favorite modes of Left 4 Dead.

Also: With work on "The Passing" in full swing, we will soon be recording the actors. First up in our recording sessions is everybody's favorite suit-wearing zombie killer Nick, played by Hugh Dillon. If you haven't already caught it, Hugh's show Durham County has been picked up by ION and is on Sunday nights at 10pm.

Lastly, in case you missed it, the CG Society has an interview up with Valve's own Randy Lundeen and Jeremy Bennett.

Turning Silver into Gold

January 12, 2010 - L4D Team

For this weekend only, Microsoft is hosting a free multiplayer weekend for Left 4 Dead 2. What does this mean? You don't need to have an Xbox Live Gold account to access Left 4 Dead 2's multiplayer features. That's right: You will be upgraded from Silver to Gold for free. You can go online alone or with a split-screen friend. This event starts at 5pm GMT Friday, January 15th and ends at 5pm on Sunday the 18th.

In other news: We've just rolled out a new PC update that you can read more about here. Xbox 360 users should be seeing a console version of this same patch very soon.

Also, over the next few weeks, keep an eye on your favorite gaming web sites and magazines for new info on our upcoming DLC "The Passing".